Wednesday, June 17, 2009

BHO's Impeachable Offense?

A short time ago, Sen. Claire McCaskill, a former Missouri state auditor who works closely with IGs in the federal government, issued a statement critical of the termination. Her statement didn’t mention the controversy surrounding the former NBA star but noted that she had authored a law requiring that IGs be given 30 days advance notice of dismissal along with the casue for termination.

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal” of Walpin, wrote McCaskill, a Democrat.

“Loss of confidence is not a sufficient reason. I’m hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible,” she concluded.

Did the Obama administration rush to close a probe into fraud committed by a political ally before discovering obstruction of justice? The Sacramento Bee reports that a former official at St. HOPE alleges that now-Mayor Kevin Johnson’s emails relating to the fraudulent use of money were deleted from the servers in order to obstruct the investigation that Gerald Walpin conducted

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[I]t looks like the White House...rushed a conclusion to the investigation without checking on the cooperation of the accused or even determining whether they had seen all of the evidence. And when the independent Inspector General tried to make that very point, the White House attacked him instead of the person who defrauded the government and may have obstructed justice on top of it.

Democrats screeched about the politicization of the Department of Justice when Bush asked for the resignations of political appointees who worked completely at his pleasure. They assumed that Bush wanted the US Attorneys out of the way for political reasons. Here we have a White House attacking an IG, authorized by both Congress and the White House and supposedly independent, for objecting to a political payoff for a high-profile Obama supporter. When do we hear that same outrage over politicization of law enforcement?